Bishop Nick will “hand over the reins” of the diocese with great confidence, he assured the June meeting of Synod in his final Presidential Address.
Recalling many events from the last 11 years, he expressed his gratitude to clergy, laity and all who have worked with him in the formation and development of Diocese of Leeds.
Bishop Nick’s final Presidential Address to Synod at Holy Trinity, Boar Lane, Leeds is available to read in full below:
“Whenever I was in the Chris Evans Radio 2 studio with famous special guests, I would try to smuggle into my script as many song titles by the guest as I could. I once managed to get fifteen Barry Manilow titles in while the great man sat there and smiled. It was just a bit of fun and the script always made perfect sense.
Well, I face this morning with a number of memorable lyrics offering themselves as nails on which to hang my last presidential address as the Bishop of Leeds. The one that wins is Bruce Cockburn’s line from ‘Pacing the Cage’: “I’ve been around so many times the magnetic strip’s worn thin.” It’s time to replace the card.
The first eleven years of this diocese have not been boring and yet I believe we can gather today for this synod with confidence in our future. We have much to thank God for in our life and mission together. There have been – and will continue to be – challenges; but, as we discovered during the Covid pandemic, this is where we find the creative energy to change and build and imagine. Crisis can be a gift.
And, through it all, our fundamental vocation as Anglicans has not changed – whatever the noises around us clamouring for our exclusive attention.
Yesterday I re-read my first presidential address from November 2014. The word ‘challenging’ does not begin to do justice to what we were faced with then; but, God is faithful, we worked hard, and we were determined not to be put off by naysayers or complainers or professional discouragers. As I remarked at the time, you don’t get a degree for spotting the problems; we need people who want to get a PhD in finding solutions. We were blessed with plenty of them. And, as time has passed, many of those courageous people then have since moved on and a new generation now takes us into the future.
So, although our agenda today takes us through what some might think of as ‘nuts and bolts’ items, we never lose sight of what we might call ‘the point of it all’. Apart from finance, accounts, stewardship, the DAC constitution and other matters, I will present an instrument of delegation which will allow me to hand over to the Bishop of Bradford with effect from 1 September – thus allowing him and me three months in which he can begin to exercise the jurisdiction of the Ordinary while I am still around to advise, if requested to do so. I will retire on 30 November from which point Bishop Toby will become legally the Acting Bishop of Leeds. This has been planned in order to facilitate a wise transition. I will say farewell to the diocese on Sunday 23 November at Ripon Cathedral as I finally lay down my pastoral and legal responsibilities.
Now, I have heard a number of ‘reasons’ why I am retiring at this point – two years before I have to. Some speculations are amusing, others not so. So, I want to be clear: I am retiring now because it is clear that the diocese needs to be moving on in a way that it cannot while I am still here. Nothing malicious – just how the world works. When I asked last November for the business case for when the diocesan bishop should go, I was told September. It wasn’t what I had in mind; but, it was right. Although I have had personal health issues to deal with more recently, they are coincident and not a reason for finishing. I want this to be clear. The diocese needs me gone in order to focus on the next stage. That is my judgment and that is the sole reason for my decision.
This ‘closing down’ of my ministry coincides with an ‘opening up’ of other new ministries.
Today we welcome the new Bishop of Wakefield, Malcolm Chamberlain, who was freshly minted only four days ago in York. He brings wide experience of parochial, chaplaincy, archidiaconal and now episcopal ministry. Please welcome him to the diocese as he finds his feet and learns a new order as well as a new geography. Bishop Malcolm’s consecration marked the point when, as the last member of the Bishop’s Staff Team to change over, my leadership-of-change job has been done. As the last person to have been part of one of our historic dioceses, I can now head off into the wilderness; now the entire diocesan leadership has been appointed to the Diocese of Leeds. It is a significant milestone.
Yet today we mark another departure. Simon Cowling retires at the end of July as Wakefield Cathedral seeks a new Dean. Simon picked up the baton in Wakefield from Jonathan Greener and has contributed strongly and effectively in managing legal change in cathedral life whilst building our unique ‘three cathedrals in one diocese’ model. I am hugely grateful to him and wish him and Anne a richly relaxing and rewarding retirement here in Yorkshire.
I could easily speak about all my colleagues, about clergy and lay leaders across the diocese, about parishes and chaplaincies where the kingdom of God is to be found and the mystery of God encountered. I might spot successes in evangelism and growth at the same time as learning where things have gone wrong and we have failed. I could draw attention to the importance of making the right appointments – see what Jonathan Wood has brought to us in the last five years. But, under it all lies the fact of God’s faithfulness to us and his call to us to be faithful to one another as ministers of the Gospel. As I always emphasise to ordinands: our primary vocation is to be human beings, made in the image of God; our discipleship of Jesus derives from our humanity; any ministry we are called to exercise as Christian disciples must derive from our discipleship (not the other way round) and be rooted in our humanity. One of the glaring messages of the gospel narratives is that when religion loses sight of humanity its protagonists object to healing because it takes place on the wrong day.
One of the first things I had to do after Easter Day 2014 was to set up a meeting in each of the new episcopal areas. Each of the five evenings began with me and the clergy – lay leaders joining us later on. I have to be honest: these were not easy meetings. Some people were keen to offend. Given that we had nothing else – and very little time to prepare – I was very straight and honest: we had no mission statement, so I tried to articulate one. I apologised that it wasn’t very sexy or original. “We want to be a vibrant diocese (that is, vibrating between the winds of the world and the wind of the Spirit), equipping confident clergy to grow confident Christians to live and tell the Good News of Jesus Christ in our region.”
I have often worried about whether we should renew it, but I never get very far.
This formulation eventually became the threefold dynamic behind appointments and any formulation of diocesan strategy: ‘Confident Christians – Growing Churches – Transforming Communities’. Again, this keeps things simple and clear. It also provides the bedrock upon which we have built Barnabas as a vehicle for growing confident Christians who grow churches which seek to transform communities in God’s world.
We then identified our values as: ‘Loving. Living. Learning’. The next Bishop of Leeds might wish to articulate our vision differently; but, I have not been able to improve it.
It seems to me that the key to all this is simplicity, clarity and coherence. It is for you to judge whether or not this has been effective thus far.
Whereas almost every person on my team has changed - some more than once – since Easter Day 2014, two people have walked this journey almost from the beginning. John Dobson was appointed Dean of Ripon as the new diocese came into being. He has been a fantastic colleague, adviser and friend from whom I have learned a huge amount. (Above the Library on the outside of the cathedral our sculpted faces smile at each other, his finger on the white Yorkshire Rose and mine on the Liver Bird.) The second is Bishop Toby who spent a year commuting from London before we had a house for him and who has been the most excellent colleague and friend during this whole journey. (Other bishops have come and gone, and we now have a strong and diverse college of bishops for whom I am grateful to God.)
Bishop Toby will be picking up the mantle from 1 December as the Acting Bishop of Leeds whilst remaining the area Bishop of Bradford. Transitions are complicated. Please support him: in prayer, with encouragement, with respect and love. I hand over the reins with confidence and enormous gratitude to him. He will be well supported by a strong team of bishops, archdeacons, deans and lay and clergy staff.
I will conclude shortly, but want to come back to what at the beginning of this address I called ‘the point of it all’. Today we will discuss one contentious issue: LLF. I make one point to set the tone and context for this discussion: if we are not at liberty to pick and choose which scriptures we take seriously, then we cannot simply ignore the High Priestly Prayer of John 17. The one thing Jesus prayed for before going to his death was the unity of his friends. He prayed this having washed the feet of his betrayer, his denier, his doubter and his deserters. None of them had the liberty to agree to unity only on certain conditions. The witness of the disciples – as people called by Jesus – was how they lived and loved together … despite each other. Not one of them had a veto over who else Jesus would invite into the boat. We don’t get to pick the Jesus we prefer or the one who, funnily enough, agrees with me on everything.
Sisters and brothers, we need to keep our biblical perspective when we confront conflicting understandings of theology and anthropology. We also need to keep a sense of historical perspective. The brilliant Luther biographer Lyndal Roper has just sent me her latest book, entitled ‘Summer of Fire and Blood’. We can too easily fixate on the Reformation itself as a theological phenomenon whilst ignoring what it produced. The German Peasants War 500 years ago this year cost the lives of 100,000 people. Luther, having bravely stood his ground against the church establishment a few years previously, now advocated the execution and slaughter of peasants who had taken his theology seriously only to find that perhaps he hadn’t thought through the implications of ‘freedom’. The passions of then look different now.
The point is that we do not have the complete vision and we have not spoken the final word. LLF was devised as a process of encounter, listening, relationship and humility; it soon became a process for political decision-making and mutual threats – power games, language that does not reflect the Gospel, a clamour for ‘protection’ that I still find bizarre on a number of fronts.
Whichever way you bend on these matters, you cannot escape the direct stare of John 17 and the refusal of the crucified one to accept easy excuses for separation from others whom Jesus has called to walk with him for the sake of the world.
Enough. This is not a sermon. But, I encourage this synod to do its business - the mundane as well as the extraordinary – with love, mercy, integrity and grace. And with the genuine humility, derived from a reading of scripture, that I might be wrong.
Thank you for your patience with my presidency and leadership over these eleven years. I will never cease to thank God for you and to pray for your faithfulness into the future. I have been blessed to be the first Bishop of Leeds. The next Bishop will be blessed to serve with you in this part of the world to which God has called you at this point in history.
May God bless you in all that lies ahead.”
The Rt Revd Nicholas Baines
Bishop of Leeds
Saturday, June 14, 2025